Barbara Mandrell struggles to save a small town from mine fires (and itself) in Burning Rage.
The most depressing thing about Burning Rage, Barbara Mandrell’s dramatic debut, is how contemporary it feels. In this 1984 telefilm, stubborn Americans would rather jeopardize their own safety, and that of their families, than listen to government scientists. There’s even a scene in which menacing goons try to prevent a scientist from conducting important research. They slink off when told, “Now if you have any problems with that you best take it up with the federal government!” These days, such an invitation might elicit a very different response.
Kenny Rogers has a pint-sized pit crew in Six Pack.
The ’80s were a cinematically magical time, when tenderhearted country music superstars couldn’t stop adopting ragtag groups of orphans. Dolly Parton did so to memorably trippy effect in A Smoky Mountain Christmas (1986), but her “Islands in the Stream” duet partner Kenny Rogers beat her to the punch four years earlier, in Six Pack.
Eyes twinkling with mischief, majestic beard shining proudly, Rogers stars as washed-up racer Brewster Baker. Sabotaged and sold out to sponsors by his former head mechanic, Terk (Terry Kiser), Brewster’s career is circling the drain. He’s stranded in the john of a dilapidated gas station in Texas when thieves make off with his race car’s new engine, which he can’t afford to replace.
Eleven years after Angie Dickinson last nabbed a perp as Sgt. Pepper Anderson on Police Woman, she was back in the hunt in Prime Target (1989). This made-for-TV movie reunites her with Police Woman creator Robert L. Collins, who writes and directs. As veteran NYPD Sgt. Kelly Mulcahaney, she’s both predator and prey while investigating crooked cops who’ve been murdering women on the force, and Dickinson seems uncharacteristically peeved.
“So, why am I heading this task force?” she asks after being handed the assignment by Commissioner Peter Armetage (David Soul, who looks amusingly louche behind his giant desk). “Because you’re one of the highest-ranking female homicide detectives we’ve got,” he answers. “Because you’re on the women’s committee. Because I requested you, personally.” They have a history, of course, and that’s where the hardboiled dialogue begins:
Kelly: You know what they’re gonna say about this. About us. Again.
Peter: Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. My friend.
Kelly: Not anymore, I’m not.
Peter: How’s Judge What’s-His-Name?
Kelly: How’s your wife?
Peter: God, you’re tough. Why are you so tough, huh?
PRime target (1989)
On her way out she tells him, “Oh, and by the way, happy birthday, Peter. I’d have brought you a present except” — she shrugs — “what do you give someone who’s had everybody?” We trust that Kelly’s formidable, but Dickinson appears bored in another of her tough-broad-in-a-man’s-world roles. She dutifully pauses after each barb lands, her mind possibly wandering to that night’s dinner plans.
Burt and Liza are under attack by critics, and a crazed killer, in Rent-a-Cop.
The ’80s were a rough decade for Burt Reynolds and Liza Minnelli, with 1988 proving something of a nadir for them both. Not only was Rent-a-Cop a critical and commercial flop, Reynolds had a second bomb with Switching Channels less than two months later. Minnelli’s year was arguably more disastrous, resulting in a Worst Actress Razzie win for her work in Cop and Arthur 2: On the Rocks. All of this makes Rent-a-Cop sound somewhat better, and worse, than it actually is.
Before we get into the plot, let’s take a moment to remember a bit of ’80s movie trivia. Just weeks before Rent-a-Cop was given its ignominious January theatrical release, Nuts received a prestige December debut. Barbra Streisand played a hooker on trial for murder in that Martin Ritt film, an unsatisfying mess that nevertheless garnered a few Golden Globe nominations. I would argue that in the battle of prostitution movies starring non-competitive EGOT honorees, Minnelli made the more enjoyable picture.
When I think about the 1980s and its enduring cinematic celebrations of the decade’s twin passions of aerobics and bad taste, Just Between Friends, a Mary Tyler Moore vanity project from hell, outranks even Perfect. That James Bridges film, in which Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta gyrate their way to cardiovascular fitness—and love—will one day earn a post of its own, but today we probe the shameless and admittedly shallow depths of Just Between Friends.
A modest, unintentionally mortifying monument to the self-obsession of celebrity, here we have a film starring Mary Tyler Moore that was written, directed and produced—under the auspices of her MTM Productions—by Allan Burns of Mary Tyler Moore Show fame. (He also penned the Kristy McNichol vehicle Just the Way You Are.) Much of that classic sitcom’s finest humor sprang from its sly, playful framing of arrogant characters. There’s arrogance to spare in Just Between Friends, but the filmmakers don’t realize it’s their own, or that it’s funny.
Recently I was minding my own business, looking for something to watch on Netflix, when I did what everyone who has been in a similar situation has done at one time or another and entered “Valerie Harper” in the search bar. Recommended was not Rhoda, sadly (or, less sadly, Night Terror), but an unfamiliar title called Strange Voices.
The plot description of this 1987 telefilm didn’t sound too promising:When their college-age daughter suddenly begins acting erratically and is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a desperate couple seeks treatment for her. But the casting was enough to catapult any TV movie into the category of “viewing as essential as Children of Paradise and Battleship Potemkin,” for this very special story starred Valerie Harper as one-half of that desperate couple and Nancy McKeon as her daughter.
